Trump stretches meaning of deregulation

One is a federal rule, initiated by former President Barack Obama, that removed Yellowstone’s grizzlies from the list of endangered species. Another repealed a grant program that hasn’t been funded since 2011.

They are among the 67 so-called “deregulatory” actions President Donald Trump cited at a Dec. 14 event to tout “the most far-reaching regulatory reform in history” designed to unburden the U.S. economy from the shackles of government oversight. To illustrate the point, he cut a length of “red tape” attached to a mountain of paper.

While the president has succeeded in undoing some major environmental and financial industry rules, a Bloomberg News review of the administration’s list found almost a third of them actually were begun under earlier presidents. Others strain the definition of lessening the burden of regulation or were rela-

tively inconsequential, the kind of actions government implements routinely.

“They are really undercutting their own credibility by putting out numbers that are not, quite frankly, very believable,” said Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who is also director of the Penn Program on Regulation.

An earlier Bloomberg review of Trump administration claims about regulatory actions found that it had taken credit for killing or delaying rules that were pending and hadn’t gone into effect, including more than 100 that were already dead under Obama.

There have been victories for the administration’s antiregulatory push — such as Congress’s repeal of 15 regulations and the Federal Communications Commission’s vote this month to curb open-internet rules — but in most cases it has merely delayed implementing rules it opposes or begun the lengthy process of killing them. That means that, so far at least, many of the actions could easily be overturned by a successor.

In one of his first actions as president, Trump ordered that two regulations be revised or eliminated before any new federal rule could be adopted. In order to follow the order, the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs created a new label for rules or agency policy shifts it deemed were lowering burdens on society, calling them deregulatory.

In the Dec. 14 news conference, Trump said the government had taken 67 such deregulatory actions through Sept. 30 — with an annual savings to society of $570 million — and had imposed just three new regulations. Instead of two for one, the ratio was 22 to one, he said. The White House didn’t respond to multiple emailed requests for comment on the list of 67 deregulatory actions.

While it isn’t nearly as sweeping as he would like, Clyde Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which advocates for limiting the role of government, applauded Trump’s effort. U.S. law requires many steps before a new rule can be imposed or an old one revised, making it difficult for a new administration to take aggressive action so soon, Crews said. “In terms of what a president can do on his own, I think this is a good start,” he said.

The administration is stepping up its efforts to undercut scores of rules that threaten the environment and public safety, says Amit Narang of the advocacy group Public Citizen, which supports regulatory protections.

However, the claim about taking 67 deregulatory actions doesn’t always add up.

For one thing, it’s difficult to assess the White House’s assertion that the deregulatory actions taken through Sept. 30 have lowered the costs to society by a net $570 million a year, or $8.1 billion over time.

The Office of Management and Budget, the White House arm that oversees regulatory actions, didn’t respond to questions from Bloomberg on how that figure was calculated. A review of the 67 regulations cited as helping drive down costs found many didn’t include cost-benefit calculations.

“I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that $570 million is potentially the cost savings, but they’re not being transparent on how much each action is saving and how it adds up to the $570 million,” said Narang, a regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen.

The cost figures also ignore projected benefits for regulations it has blocked, distorting the actual impacts on society, said Denise Grab, a lawyer with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law. The institute has sued to block some of the administration’s regulatory actions.

At least 22 of the 67 deregulatory actions — from allowing imports of Japanese persimmons to adopting new electric vehicle safety rules — were adapted from efforts begun under Obama, often with little or no change, according to records.

While the list of 67 runs up until Sept. 30, federal records show agencies have continued after that date to label actions as deregulatory even though they are just eliminating outdated or unnecessary proposals.

For example, the Food and Drug Administration on Oct. 18 killed a proposed rule that would have prohibited the use of cow byproducts in the manufacture of drugs, according to records. The rule, originally proposed in 2007, was designed to protect against the spread of madcow disease, but other actions since then have protected cattle. Eliminating the rule will have no effect on the cattle industry.

Under Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken steps to rescind, delay or undermine environmental regulations issued under the previous administration. The agency put off the carbon-cutting Clean Power Plan and moved to repeal it. It delayed rules on methane leaks from oil and gas equipment, safety requirements on chemical plants and pollution in the water released by coal plants. But of the 16 deregulatory actions taken by EPA on the administration’s list, six were proposed under Obama and completed without major changes.